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Summary of the impact

The Network & Information Security Technology Lab (NISTL) at
Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) conducts research in securing
networked systems against the growing threat of cyber crime. The research
has generated a correlated set of new security protocols, novel system
composition methods and efficient digital forensic analysis schemes for
more effective layered security protection. Their main impacts for the
period 01/2008 - 07/2013 are highlighted below:

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Thales (engaging in commercial secure system development) has
continued collaboration with us to exploit our findings on system
composition since 2008. This enabled Thales to deliver three invention
disclosures and one security-enhanced commercial solution. The open
source software version produced was downloaded 14,323 times since
04/2009.

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Our research in forensic analysis led to the generation of a patent in
2009, which was later implemented by the lab into a software tool.
Merseyside Police used the tool to enhance its efficiency in digital
forensic analysis by 8.5 times.

In addition to the above direct impacts, our work is also beneficial to
other organisations and even the general public, as they all require
security techniques for information protection.

Underpinning research

The rapid development of networked systems has been constantly moving
towards the provision of seamless, ubiquitous and intelligent services
through system integrations. These integrated systems often process
valuable, critical, confidential or private information that must be
secured against unauthorised access and cyber crime. However, the
increasing complexity of the systems poses serious challenges to their
security protection and makes already very intricate security tasks much
harder to handle. Consequently the systems become far more vulnerable to
the growing quantity of cyber attacks.

To tackle the above problems, our NISTL lab has a long-term research goal
of developing an integrated framework to systematically handle security
issues at three important layers for preventing, detecting and
investigating cyber attacks. The first layer addresses the research
challenges of securing individual component systems. The second supports
the secure composition of component systems based on their properties to
form a larger networked system. The third layer deals with cooperation
between a composed system and other security measures such as intrusion
detection and forensic analysis for enhanced security protection.

This case study takes one example of the lab's work from each of the
above three layers to illustrate the impact of our research. It includes a
security scheme at the first layer, secure system/component composition at
the second layer, and a forensic analysis method at the third layer. The
key research findings from them are outlined separately below:

The security scheme published in 2013 by Prof. Q. Shi, Prof. M.
Merabti and Dr K. Kifayat (Lecturer since 09/2010) at LJMU together with
Dr N. Zhang (Senior Lecturer at Manchester University) allows a node in
a heterogeneous wireless sensor network to establish shared
cryptographic keys with others in an authentic and resource-efficient
manner to support secure communication [1]. A central novel outcome of
the research is that the hierarchical clustering features of the network
can be used to deliver vertical key shareability before sensor
deployment to enable horizontal key shareability when needed after the
deployment. The finding empowers the scheme with the ability to not only
achieve strong authenticity and resilience against security threats, but
also to offer better resource-efficiency, flexibility and scalability
than related work.

The early work published in 1998 by Dr Q. Shi (Lecturer at LJMU) and
Dr N. Zhang (Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University) proposed a
novel model for secure system composition [2]. A key finding of the work
revealed that it is possible for a composed system to obtain stronger
security than some of its component systems by properly handling their
security properties and interactions. The importance of this finding was
that it laid down a theoretical foundation for the development of more
applicable solutions to secure system composition, which were virtually
non-existent at the time.
The above work was then exploited to secure an EPSRC research grant of
£146k for advancing secure system composition techniques in the context
of personal ubiquitous computing between 03/2003 - 02/2006 [7]. Prof. M.
Merabti, Dr. Q. Shi (Principal Lecturer) and Dr. R. Askwith (Lecturer)
at LJMU were the project investigators, and Dr. D. Llewellyn- Jones was
employed as a RA to work on the project. One of the original research
outcomes produced is a framework for protecting networked systems from
code with security flaws by integrating direct code analysis with secure
system composition [3]. The framework offers a practical and effective
solution to system protection.
Since the successful completion of the project in 2006, the research has
been continuing in partnership with Thales Research and Technology Ltd,
with Dr B. Zhou employed as the first RA at LJMU for the research. One
of the innovative results generated is a method for performing boundary
checks to secure a system composition [4]. It has been exploited jointly
to provide a simplified, effective and applicable way of ensuring the
security of system composition. The method was published at IEEE SoSE
2010, winning the conference's best paper award due to the novel way it
solves a practical and challenging problem.
Moreover, our research has been further boosted by a large EU FP7
project, ANIKETOS, with a total grant of €9.6m including €741k awarded
to LJMU to develop secure and trustworthy composite services during the
period 08/2010 - 01/2014 [8]. Prof. M. Merabti, Prof. Q. Shi, Dr. D.
Llewellyn-Jones (Reader) and Dr. R. Askwith (Principal Lecturer) are the
project investigators at LJMU. One of the main outcomes produced so far
is a novel architecture with the capabilities needed at the platform
level for managing trust, security and threats in relation to required
services [5].

The research conducted by Dr. J. Haggerty (Lecturer, left in 09/2009)
and Dr. D. Llewellyn- Jones (Lecturer) at LJMU produced a novel method
for the searching of malicious data stored in computers or networks for
digital forensic investigation, which was first patented in 2009 [6].
The work focussed on the increasing complexity of systems and the
consequence this has on the time taken for forensic analysis. The key
finding from the method evaluation showed that it is feasible to
efficiently and effectively detect large datasets of malicious data
(millions of images) from large quantities of hard drive storage
(hundreds of gigabytes of data). Such efficiency is important for
expediting the forensic investigation process.

[6] J. Haggerty and D. Llewellyn-Jones, "Method and Apparatus for
Detection of Data in a Data Store", Patent published in US in Nov. 2009
with number 12/152335 and extended in Sept. 2012 with number 8265428, and
also in UK in Dec. 2010 with number PCT/GB2010/001103.

Note that the above references 1, 2 and 6 best indicate the quality of
our research.

Details of the impact

Cyber security is becoming ever more important as society increasingly
relies on networked systems, while at the same time security threats to
the normal operation of these systems grow in number. To counter such
threats, it is important to develop effective tools to reduce security
vulnerabilities, and train users for proper understanding and handling of
security threats and tools for system protection. These activities are
underpinned by the three areas of our research outlined in Section 2, with
their impacts detailed separately below:

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Secure system composition: Our lab's research outcomes in this
area were disseminated through publications in journals and at
conferences. This attracted interests from Thales Research and
Technology (UK) Ltd, which actively engages in secure system
development. A joint on-going project was then initiated in 2006 to
transfer the lab's work on secure system composition outlined in Section
2 into security tools. During the period 01/2008 - 07/2013, the project
resulted in three invention disclosures and an enhanced Secure On-
Demand Architecture (SODA) solution to dynamic cascade vulnerability
checks in real-world networks for Thales [a]. The collaboration is
evidenced in joint publication [4] in Section 3. The work has benefited
Thales in terms of better security solutions.
In addition, the project enabled our lab to produce a software tool
MATTS (Mobile Agent Topology Test System) for assessing composed system
security. Some components of MATTS have been released by the lab as open
source software [b]. This helps to promote its further development by
other developers and to make the tool freely available for security
improvement. Between 04/2009 - 07/2013, the released visualisation
component of MATTS was downloaded 14,323 times (about 3,305 times per
year) worldwide [c]. This has made a positive impact on the wide
adoption of advanced technologies.
The lab's security research also received broad international
recognition through the dissemination. This led to collaboration with 16
other partners across 9 EU countries to secure an EU FP7 grant of €9.6m
for developing secure and trustworthy composite services between 08/2010
- 01/2014 (see [8] in Section 3). The lab is the third largest
contributor with €741k. [text removed for publication].
The lab's work on secure system composition outlined in Section 2 forms
a core theme of the project. It has been integrated into the solutions
and tools being exploited by the project's 10 industrial partners for
the development of secure composite services. The exploitation has
benefited not only these companies through more advanced security
techniques but also their customers through better-secured services.
[text removed for publication].
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Forensic analysis: As described in Section 2, the lab produced
a patent published in the US and UK in 2009 and 2010 respectively (see
[6] in Section 3). A spinout company Forsigs [d] was created jointly
with Tubedale Communications Ltd in 2008 with an investment of £120k to
commercialise the patented technique for fast and accurate automated
searching of illegal data stored in computing devices for forensic
investigations. The product mainly aims at users from law enforcement
organisations (e.g. police) and companies. It has been used by the
Merseyside Police High Tech Crime Unit (MPHTCU) in real investigations
[e]. The product demonstrated a speed improvement of 8.5 times that of
the previous tool used by the police with one case reducing a full
analysis from 22 hours down to 19 minutes, which was measured between
10/2010 - 03/2011. This reduces investigation time and hence increases
the police's efficiency in solving criminal cases. The use of the
product also resulted in the development of a new triaging process at
MPHTCU.
The lab also provided MSc-level computer forensics training for 3
policemen from MPHTCU (09/2009 - 09/2011), one of whom is now at the
National Cyber Crime Unit, and a training course (04 - 05/2013) for 3
policemen for setting up Kuwait's first computer forensics unit.